Rivers made no direct answer.  Was it hopeless?  He tried to read the face—­the too thin straight nose, white between dusky red cheeks, the projecting lower lip, and the lip above it long, the eyes small, red, and eagerly attentive.  This was not the time for reason.  He said, “I should be your worst enemy, Peter.  Every one has been good to you; over and over the Squire has saved you from jail.  Mrs. Penhallow asked me to help you.  Try to bear what your sin has brought on you, oh! do try.  Pray God for help to bear it patiently.”

“I’m in hell.  What’s the use of praying in hell?  Get me whisky and I’ll pray.”

Rivers felt himself to be at the end of his resources, and that the enfeebled mind was incapable of response to any appeal to head or heart.  “I will come again,” he said.  “Good-bye.”

“Oh, damn everybody,” muttered Peter.

Rivers went out and sent Billy up to take charge.  Lamb was still sitting up in bed when Billy returned.  The simple fellow poured out in brief sentences small bits of what he had seen at the street door.

“Oh, shut up,” said Peter.  “The doctor says I’ll feel better if I’m shaved—­ain’t been shaved these three weeks.  Doctor wants you to go and get Josiah to come and fix me up to-night.  You tell him it’s the doctor’s orders.  Don’t you be gone long.  I’m kind of lonely.”

“All right,” said Billy, in the cheerful way which made him a favourite despite his disinclination for steady work.

“Now, don’t be gone long.  I need a good shave, Billy.”

“Guess you do—­way you look you wouldn’t fetch five cents at one of them rummage-sales.  Ain’t had but one in four years.”

“Oh, get out, Billy.”  Once rid of his guard he tried in vain to stand up and fell back cursing.

The order from the doctor was to be obeyed.  “Guess he’s too shaky to shave himself,” said Josiah.  “I’ll come about half-past eight.”

As Josiah walked to the far end of the village, he thought in his simple way of his last three years.  After much wandering and fear of being traced, he had been used at the stables by Penhallow.  That he had been a slave was suspected, but that troubled no one in Westways.  He had long felt at ease and safe.  He lived alone, a man of some forty years, cooked for himself, and had in the county bank a small amount of carefully saved earnings.  He had his likes and dislikes, but he had the prudently guarded tongue of servitude.  Long before John Penhallow had understood better the tall black man’s position and won the confidence of a friendly hour, he saw with his well-bred courtesy how pleased was the man to be called Mr. Josiah.  It sounded queer, as Pole remarked, to call a runaway darkey Mister, but this in no way disturbed John.  The friendly feeling for the black grew as they fished together in the summer afternoons, or trapped muskrats, or dug up hellbenders.  The barber had one half-concealed dislike.  The man he was now to shave he both feared and hated.  “Couldn’t tell you why, Master John.  It’s like the way Crocker’s wife’s ’feared of cats.  They ain’t never hurt her none.”